‘Our dad’s painting is hiding, in secret place’: how Aboriginal rock art can live on even when gone

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Author(s)
Goldhahn, Joakim
Tacon, Paul
Year published
2021
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boriginal rock art unfolds stories about the present-past and emerging worlds, often described by an outsider as the Dreamtime. Some rock art, it is believed, was put in place by spiritual and mythological beings. Many of these Ancestral Beings travelled vast distances, and their journeys link places, clans and different rock art paintings.
Other images were created to educate children about cultural protocols, or just made to tell an amusing story. The artists who created the works are also important. Some artists were prolific and appreciated. A person who made a hand stencil could often be identified by the hand’s shape.boriginal rock art unfolds stories about the present-past and emerging worlds, often described by an outsider as the Dreamtime. Some rock art, it is believed, was put in place by spiritual and mythological beings. Many of these Ancestral Beings travelled vast distances, and their journeys link places, clans and different rock art paintings.
Other images were created to educate children about cultural protocols, or just made to tell an amusing story. The artists who created the works are also important. Some artists were prolific and appreciated. A person who made a hand stencil could often be identified by the hand’s shape.
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Journal Title
The Conversation
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subject
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander archaeology
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural history